The Swedish Northvolt launches its giga-factory for electric batteries | Photo credits: Tesla
STOCKHOLM, Dec.29 (Reuters) – Swedish group Northvolt on Wednesday announced the start of a “giga-factory” of batteries for electric cars in northern Sweden, the first to be launched by a European company on the continent.
Northvolt said a first electric battery cell rolled off the assembly line at its factory in Skellefteå, a small industrial town in Sweden’s main mining area on Tuesday evening.
The commissioning and ramp-up of the site, which is expected to reach a production capacity of 60 gigawatt hours (GWh), will continue in 2022, when the first commercial deliveries will be made.
Northvolt has already received contracts worth more than $ 30 billion (26.5 billion euros) from customers such as BMW, Fluence, Scania, Volkswagen, Volvo Cars and Polestar.
It targets at least 20 to 25% of the European market by 2030, and would thus compete with groups such as the American Tesla or the Asian battery producers Panasonic, LG Chem or CATL. (Report Supantha Mukherjee and Helena Soderpalm; French version Valentine Baldassari, edited by Jean-Stéphane Brosse)